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rhetoric

Reason and logic in a speech do not rouse audiences, lift their spirits, set their hearts on fire.

Reason and logic do not shape the way people imagine the world or what is possible and desirable.

Reason and logic do not move audiences to action.

Doubt me?

Consider Donald Trump.

His speeches do not employ logic or reason, verifiable facts, or consistency of thought. And yet they have mobilized an army of true believers.

Trump’s opponents try valiantly to counter his rhetoric. They “fact check” his statements and show them to be demonstrably false. They quote him against himself, showing earlier video clips or tweets that contradict his later claims. They poke gaping holes in his reasoning, such as it is.

But all the well-reasoned and logical efforts of Trump’s opponents fail to dampen the appeal of his message, the fervor of his followers.

Why?

Because we are not primarily rational creatures.

Reason and logic aren’t built into us. We come into this world with hardwired urges, appetites, instincts, and emotional predispositions.

No one needs to teach us to fear or envy or covet or resent, or to love or enjoy or trust or hope. (To be sure, others may teach us who or what to fear, envy, etc. And they may distort or enrich our urges and desires.)

But we have to learn how to use reason and logic.

And it’s a tough slog.

For most of us, most of the time, reason and logic fail to sway us from what our guts tell us, from what feels right.

To counter Trump’s rhetoric, a more reasonable and logical counterargument isn’t sufficient.

I’m not sure what will work.

I’m playing around with the idea that an approach more persuasive than reason and logic is based on three principles:

The importance of belonging and adhering to the rules and customs of a tribe.

The power of stories to shape our understanding of the world and how it works.

The appeal of magical thinking.

In future posts, I’ll try to tease out what I mean by tribe, stories, and magical thinking.

But intentionally confusing an audience can be an effective rhetorical strategy.

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I’m both fascinated and appalled by Donald Trump’s popularity in the political arena these days.

As a student and practitioner of public speaking, I think his popularity is rooted in his skillful appeal to people’s sense of rage.

He has perfected “the rhetoric of rage.”

What is Rhetoric?

Rhetoric is the artful use of words to persuade.

The goal of rhetoric is not to educate or inform, not to entertain or amuse, not to convince or convert.

The goal of rhetoric is to move people to take action.

To induce people to act, you may have to educate, inform, entertain, amuse, convince, and/or convert them. But the goal of rhetoric is always action, action, action.

Logic and reason don’t move people to act. Emotions do.

What is Rage?

Rage is anger that is so intense it threatens to explode into violent action.

We may seethe with anger, but rage makes us want to lash out at someone.

Rage, like anger, is a reaction to the perception that someone has deprived us of something we value.

There are, therefore, three elements of rage:

Loss: We no longer have something of value that we once possessed or think we had a right to.

Deprivation: We don’t have it, because it was taken from us.

Adversary: “They” took it from us.

By itself the sense of loss does not fuel rage. The appropriate response to loss is grief.

At the root of rage (and of anger) is a sense of injustice. “It’s not right.”

Whereas anger is the impetus to make things right, to restore justice, rage seeks revenge.

Rage isn’t satisfied with reclaiming what was lost. It wants to punish those who stole it in the first place.

Rage requires an adversary, an enemy, a villain, a them. (They are specific people or a specific class of people, not impersonal forces or events.)

The Rhetoric of Rage

Rhetoric and rage are made for each other.

Rhetoric wants to move people to act. Rage makes people want to act.

To use the rhetoric of rage:

1. Remind people of what they’ve lost.

Have they lost their social status and the rights and privileges due to them? Have they lost their jobs or financial security? Have they lost the right to impose their beliefs and values on others? Have they lost their confidence in government, social institutions, and the very future?

Don’t confuse them with facts or logic. They may not have possessed in the first place what they think they’ve lost. Or they may not have had the right to it. That’s not the issue. What matters is that they think – or more importantly – they feel that they’ve lost it.

2. Frame that loss as deprivation.

Losing something of value makes people sad and powerless, which they don’t like. So tell them it was taken from them. It’s not their fault they lost something valuable: it’s someone else’s fault.

3. Identify the adversary.

This is easy. Given the right mind-set, there’s always someone to blame: immigrants, gays, women, terrorists, criminals, the one-percenters.

Make it personal. “We’re losing the cultural war” isn’t as powerful as “Gays are destroying the very definition of marriage.” “We [whites] are becoming the minority” doesn’t move people as much as “Mexicans are streaming across our borders, bringing drugs with them, and taking our jobs.”

What do you think? Am I on to something? What would you add, subtract, or refute?